Description
MISSION POSSIBLE SERMON SERIES
READY, SET, HIRE! – RECOGNIZING LEADERSHIP
ED YOUNG
MAY 26, 1996
Reams of pages and stacks of books have been penned on the subject of leadership. From the ONE MINUTE MANAGER to FIRST THINGS FIRST, from the ROGUE WARRIOR to SWIM WITH THE SHARKS, from HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE to Fortune Magazine, people love to read about leadership. Every year when a brand new book hits the newsstand, millions of copies are sold if the book is a really good one on leadership. What do you think about when you hear the word leadership? Leadership can be defined in one word – influence. Leadership is influence.
Today we are going to meet someone up close and personal who knows a lot about leadership. I am going to say something to you that might rock you a little bit. Most of you right now own the greatest book ever penned on leadership. The fact of the matter is, the majority of us have never even read it. This book was penned by a man who was very prominent in politics and business over in the Middle East. It was written by a man who rose from obscurity to national recognition overnight. It was written by a man who knew a lot about leadership and who put that knowledge into practice. The book bears this man’s name, NEHEMIAH. Nehemiah, the greatest book, the greatest journal, ever written on leadership. If you want to learn about time management, study Nehemiah. If you want to learn about management by objective, study Nehemiah. If you want to learn about how to cast a vision, study Nehemiah. If you want to learn about how character and leadership go hand in hand, study Nehemiah. If you want to learn how to handle unfair criticism, study Nehemiah. And guess what. For the next six weeks we are going to study Nehemiah. This man will sort of mentor us and improve and tweak our leadership skills.
Now some of you are saying to yourself, “Self, I don’t need this series because I am not a leader. I am not Nehemiah, I am not a Margaret Thatcher, I am not an Iococca, I am not a Ken Blanchard, I am not a Stephen Covey, I am not a leader.” That line of thinking is false, because if you are alive, you are a leader. Leadership means influence and everyone of us influences someone whether it be in the home, the office, the neighborhood or at school. We all need this series so that we can improve our leadership skills.
Now before we dive into the book of Nehemiah, it is important for us to get some history under our belts. Listen very carefully to what I am going to say. The year is 586 BC. Enter King Nebuchadnezzar, the leader of the Babylonian empire. King Nebuchadnezzar attacked Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, the house of worship, and then he does something that is really bad, he destroyed their city walls. Now if you destroyed a city’s walls back then, that was big, that was bad, that was ugly. He was a very sadistic, legalistic, mean king. We don’t have city walls these days. We build fences around our houses, we live in gated communities, we buy sophisticated alarm systems, but no city walls. City walls, though, provided protection for Jerusalem. They showed the other people living in the land that the Jewish God is a God of protection. The walls allowed them to worship in peace. And if enemies tried to attack Jerusalem, the wall would slow them down three to six months.
Now the walls were down. Don’t forget the walls because the walls are one of the major themes in the book of Nehemiah. King Nebuchadnezzar doesn’t stop here. He takes a lot of the Jews and he deports them 800 miles through the desert back to Babylon. This is know in history as the Babylonian captivity. The Jews hung out there in Babylon as slaves for a long period of time until one day, out of nowhere, the Medes and the Persians attacked Babylon and overthrew it. A new king then took the helm. King Nebuchadnezzar was gone and the new king was King Cyrus. I think his first name was Billy Ray. King Cyrus of Persia had an achy-breaky heart, a sympathetic heart toward the Jews. He said, “Jews, I’ll tell you what I am going to do. I’ll let you go back 800 miles to Jerusalem and if you want to you can construct your house of worship and if you want to you can rebuild the walls.” So a lot of Jews went back under a man named Zerubbable and under a man named Ezra. The temple kind of got rebuilt. Noone, though, could rebuild the walls. So they were doing the worship thing in Jerusalem but they were open and naked for opposing forces to come in and tear them apart.
Billy Ray Cyrus steps down. A new king moved into the palatial oval office of Persia, which is today known as Iraq. His name, making the all name team in the Bible, was King Artaxerxes. King Artaxerxes is now the man of the hour in Persia. And King Artaxerxes says, “There will never be walls around Jerusalem again.” King Artaxerxes said that.
Let’s talk about our boy, Nehemiah. Let’s talk about the man of leadership. The book of Nehemiah is a book of Nehemiah’s memoirs. And Nehemiah talks about his occupation. You might think he must be on the CEO level since he is representing leadership in this series. Look what Nehemiah says in chapter 1, verse 11. “…I was a cupbearer to the King.” A what-bearer? A cupbearer. Nehemiah, Mr. Leader. You mean he was a table waiter, a camelburger flipping person? No. He was a cupbearer to the King and don’t misinterpret the term cupbearer. The cupbearer was the second most important position in the empire. Nehemiah was a Hebrew, a non-Persian, yet he was second in command to King Artaxerxes. They didn’t have CNN back then. He would give late breaking news to the King. He was the most faithful and trusted advisor to the King. He was the wine and food taster because assassinations back then were quite common. So if a cupbearer tasted some wine and dropped over dead, the King would say, “Well, guess that was a bad year.” Nehemiah had it made. He had all the perks, all the benefits of being the cupbearer; the corner office, the cellular chariot phone, the use of the company’s team of camels. Major money. I can picture Nehemiah kicking back in his corner office overlooking the beautiful sights of Susa, the Washington, D.C. of Persia, the place of power plays, power suits and power lunches. Maybe, just maybe, he heard the Mission Impossible theme song. Maybe, just maybe, as he heard the music, and I am paraphrasing a little bit, God stepped in and said, “Nehemiah, this is your mission should you choose to accept it. Travel 800 miles to Jerusalem and rebuilt My walls around My city. By the way, Nehemiah, you are going to face some major opposition, some major criticism. Also, Nehemiah, you will have to walk into King Artaxerxes’ office, the man you report to directly, who can chop your head off if he is in a bad mood, and ask for about a decade off work while keeping all your salary and benefits. You will have to ask for the resources to go back to Jerusalem, the security forces and the travel documents. Nehemiah, I know you are a cupbearer but I am going to take you and turn you from a cupbearer into a contractor. Nehemiah, I will give you the ability to do it. This mission has been impossible for 90 years, but in My economy, it is possible.” Then maybe God said, “Nehemiah, if you choose not to accept this mission, Jerusalem could self-destruct one day in five seconds.”
Why did God say to Nehemiah, ready, set, hire? He said that to Nehemiah because Nehemiah met the four basic requirements of leadership. These are precisely the requirements that we need to meet if we are going to improve our leadership skills. Whether you are a leader in the home, whether you are a leader in middle management, whether you are an hourly employee, whether you are a president or CEO of a major company, if you are going to be a true difference maker, you had better see if you meet four basic requirements.
Let’s look at the first requirement that this great leader Nehemiah met. Nehemiah 1:1-2. “in the month of Kislev…while I was in the citadel of Susa, Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem.” Circle the phrase, I questioned them. Here is the first requirement of being a leader, don’t miss it. Leaders ask the right questions. Notice Nehemiah asked the right person, his brother, who would shoot straight with him. He asked the right question to the right person, who had the right information. Because he did that he could do the right thing that God wanted him to do. Leaders ask the hard questions, the penetrating questions, the serious questions. He asked his brother these questions. Your brothers and sisters tell you the truth, don’t they. He didn’t just ask someone who was a yes person. “Hey, how is it going in Jerusalem?” “Oh, great, Nehemiah, everything is perfect. Morale is great.” He asked someone who would tell him the truth.
I have two brothers. I am thirty-five, my middle brother is thirty-three and my youngest brother is twenty-two. My middle brother has a syndicated talk show for singles in ten major markets. It is a Christian talk show about dating, living alone, building relationships, etc. Ben and I will talk about different messages and ideas. If I ask Ben what he thinks about using the Mission Impossible theme regarding Artaxerxes and Nehemiah, he will tell me that that sounds great. If I should ask him about another idea, he might reply that he thinks it is crazy, that it wouldn’t work. I will listen to that and receive that. I know he is shooting straight. Conversely, Ben will ask me what I thought about a specific guest that he had on his Sunday night talk show. I might answer that she was clueless and boring.
So Nehemiah asked Hanani what was the deal and Hanani replied that the people were in trouble. Let me stop here and say something to you. Who do you need to ask some hard questions of right now; the person you have been in a long relationship with, a spouse, a child, a co-worker, a trusted friend? Maybe you would ask them questions like, how is your life going spiritually? What is the next character step you are working on? What is the main thing you struggle with? Ask someone who you have a natural affinity with, a natural bond with, the hard questions and you will begin to emerge and develop as a leader. Leaders ask the right questions.
Notice, too, leaders listen for the right answers. They ask the right questions and then they listen for the right answers. They are not selective listeners. We go back to Nehemiah 1:3. “…They said to me, ‘Those who survived the exile and are back in the providence are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.'” Let me just push the pause button here. As Nehemiah was hearing all this bad stuff, he could have reacted very differently than he did. Since he had a cush job and had it made with retirement plans and benefits, he didn’t have to concern himself with the Jews in Jerusalem. He wasn’t even born in Jerusalem, he was born in Persia and was more Persian than Jewish with the exception that he believed in God. He didn’t need to get involved with those other Jews. But he didn’t react that way. Likewise he could have said, as many of us have said when we have been presented with a problem, “Who messed up? You mean those Jews have been there for 90 years and the wall still hasn’t gotten rebuilt. What’s the deal? How inept. How stupid. How ludicrous. How crazy. Send me their names. I’ll get them fired.” He didn’t say that though. Look what he did. He did something that is just different. Nehemiah 1:4. “When I heard these things, I sat down….” That’s right, God’s man, one of the greatest leaders to ever walk on the face the earth, sat down. That is the first thing we are to do, leaders, when we are presented with a problem or a predicament. Great leaders like Nehemiah are sensitive, they sit where others sit, they walk where others walk, they feel what others feel. Nehemiah “…sat down and wept.” He sat down and wept. He was identifying with them. Are you identifying with people in your life? Are you identifying with people in your company? Are you identifying with people in your Bible Study? Are you identifying with other people you rub shoulders with weekly? Listen for the right answers.
The third leadership requirement that Nehemiah met was that after asking the right questions and listening for the right answers, then he prayed the right prayers. You can’t pray the right prayers until first of all you have asked the right questions and listened for the right answers. Then you can pray the right prayers. Nehemiah is a handbook on prayer. Nine times Nehemiah prayed. He prayed short prayers, he prayed microwave prayers, he prayed long prayers, he prayed medium length prayers. He was a man of prayer. Leadership and prayer go hand in hand. You see, leaders do more than just pray, but they never do anything until they first pray. So Nehemiah sat down, he wept and then he prayed the right prayers. Nehemiah 1:4-6. “…For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed…” He mourned, again, he was identifying with them. He fasted, he missed a lot of meals to improve his relationship with God. And he prayed. The Bible says, and don’t miss this, for some days. Now when I have a problem in my life or I am praying about something, I say “God, I am really going to pray about this.” Sunday, “Dear God, please deal with this problem.” Monday, “Dear God, please help me with this problem.” Tuesday, “Dear God, help me with this problem.” Wednesday, Thursday. “OK, He hasn’t answered.” For some days he prayed. In actuality he prayed for four months, he prayed, he got in touch with God, he mourned, he fasted, he prayed. He prioritized. He thought about the problem.
Now let’s look and examine Nehemiah’s prayers. God answered Nehemiah’s prayers and if we can learn how to pray the prayers Nehemiah prayed, God will answer our prayers. I am going to give you the four Cs of prayer, and this is the prayer of a true leader. First of all notice that Nehemiah concentrated on the character of God. All great prayer begins with the character of God. Let me say something right up front. You don’t have to use big words to talk to God in prayer. I have been in a lot of religious circles over my 35 years and after of have heard some people pray I have wanted to give them a round of applause for their amazing use of vocabulary. That doesn’t impress God a bit. God wants authenticity. God wants vulnerability. God wants people to talk to Him like they talk to others. Just talk to God. Don’t freak out about praying, just talk to God. That is what Nehemiah did. First C, he concentrated on the character of God. Nehemiah 1:5, “O Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God….” That is God’s character. God You are unbelievable, You are awesome. Then the second C, confession. All great praying includes confession of sin, admitting the truth about your condition. Look in the middle of Nehemiah 1:6, “I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s house have committed against you…” Here is the principle. Leaders accept the blame, losers pass the buck. Leaders take the hit, they stand back in the pocket, losers run out of bounds. When you pray do you confess sin, specific sin? Some people pray, “Oh, God, change my husband, he is not treating me right. He is unGodly. Change him, Lord, strike him with lightening, Lord. Bring him to his senses, Lord.” Those are great prayers and I am all for that, but they forget about their own sins and their own selfishness. Worry about yourself. Yes, pray for others that they will change. But worry about yourself, confess your own sins. Nehemiah confessed his sins and also the sins, corporately, of Israel. He was real before God. Leaders accept the blame. Confession.
The third C is confidence. He showed confidence in God’s promises. In Nehemiah 1:8 he seems to be asking God to remember something that He had promised. But God is omniscient and doesn’t forget anything. So has Nehemiah lost it? No. The Bible says time and time again that we are to recite the promises of God, to God when we pray. There are over 7,000 promises in the Bible. We don’t recite them for God. He knows He said them. We recite them for us so that we can remember what He said and that He will do what He said. And listen to this promise. Talk about a great promise in all of our lives. “…If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations….” And that is just what had happened, the Jews had been unfaithful and they were scattered. And a lot of you right now feel scattered, relationally, emotionally, spiritually, physically. You feel scattered. Here is the promise though, “…but if you return to me and obey my commands, then even if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my Name..” It was God’s promise back then, it is God’s promise to you today.
Focus on God’s character. Make sure you confess sin. And have confidence in God’s promises. Notice the words, obey His commands? You see, if we are living in sin, we can pray all day and all night and our prayers won’t get very far. Sin, dealt with radically is sin dealt with effectively and when it is dealt with radically and effectively, then we can pray. Then we are a pure vessel. Then we can talk to God and get it right. If you have a problem with your earthly parent and not dealt with it, your relationship isn’t broken but your fellowship is broken. Same way with God. If, for example, I am involved in sex outside of marriage, I can pray all day, every day, but my prayers are not going to get very far because I am living in sin. Now when I say that I will keep myself pure until marriage and turn from that sin, then I begin to pray and that is when God’s promises are moved into performance. You have got to deal with sin. You can’t just say, “God, here I am. Yeah, I’ll continue to lie to my business partner, I will continue this lustful thought life, I’ll continue to stab this person in the back relationally. God, help me, change me, bless me.” It is not going to happen.
The fourth C is commitment. He was committed to be a part of the answer to the prayer. Nehemiah told God that he was available. And God is looking for availability much more than He is looking for ability. Availability more than ability. Nehemiah was not the man you would choose to lead this great work. He was a cupbearer. He had soft hands. He didn’t know anything about working in the boiling hot sun of Jerusalem. Yet God wanted him to be His man.
Leaders ask the right questions, listen for the right answers, pray the right prayers and also, leaders do the right thing. Spike Lee wasn’t the first one to say that. We continue in this prayer. Here is what Nehemiah says to conclude his prayer. Nehemiah 1:11. “Give your servant success today…” Let me ask you a question. Do you ever pray for success? You should. So should I. We should pray that God will make us successful if, and here is the contingency, if what we are doing is openly for the glory of God. “God, make me successful, I mean super-successful.” But if we can’t ask God to bless what we are doing then we better not do it. Nehemiah said, …”give your servant success today by granting him favor in the presence of this man.” Nehemiah was freaking out, frightened to go before Artaxexes. And here is what I think happened. I think that Nehemiah was praying, fasting and mourning, praying, fasting and mourning, contemplating the problem over and over again. And one day a little light came on inspired by the Holy Spirit of God that said, “Nehemiah, you are a major part of this prayer request. You, Nehemiah, are a major piece in the answer to this puzzle.” Whatever you are praying for right now, I will guarantee you something. In most situations you are the major answer to your problem. So instead of just moaning, fasting, praying, get up, start doing something, start becoming proactive like Nehemiah did.
Think about God’s mission for your life. It is possible. Because God is saying to you in no uncertain terms today, this is your mission. Leadership should you choose to accept it. Leadership at the home, at the office, in the neighborhood, in every slice of life. Maybe God is saying that if you refuse to accept it, one day out of nowhere your life could self-destruct in about five seconds. Accept God’s mission that is possible and recognize leadership.